Main menu

Post navigation

Calm In A Hurry? ~ Parenting Help

The opposite of calm is hurry. If you feel like you have to hurry all the time, then you will never be calm. Also, if you feel like you have to hurry through your teaching interactions with your children then you will also have a harder time staying calm. Don’t let your desire for being efficient ruin your ability to be calm. William Jordan, the great philosopher said:

The first sermon in the world was preached at the Creation. It was aDivine protest against Hurry. It was a Divine object lesson of perfect
law, perfect plan, perfect order, perfect method. Six days of work
carefully planned, scheduled and completed were followed by,–rest.

Hurry has ruined more Americans than has any other word in the
vocabulary of life. It is the scourge of America; and is both a cause
and a result of our high-pressure civilization. Hurry adroitly assumes
so many masquerades of disguise that its identity is not always
recognized.

Hurry is the deathblow to calmness, to dignity, to poise. The old-time
courtesy went out when the new-time hurry came in. Hurry is the father
of dyspepsia. In the rush of our national life, the bolting of food has
become a national vice. The words “Quick Lunches” might properly be
placed on thousands of headstones in our cemeteries. Man forgets that
he is the only animal that dines; the others merely feed. Why does he
abrogate his right to dine and go to the end of the line with the mere
feeders?

Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the
newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its
growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full
power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few
weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries.

Let us as individuals banish the word “Hurry” from our lives. Let us
care for nothing so much that we would pay honor and self-respect as
the price of hurrying it. Let us cultivate calmness, restfulness,
poise, sweetness,–doing our best, bearing all things as bravely as we
can; living our life undisturbed by the prosperity of the wicked or the
malice of the envious. Let us not be impatient, chafing at delay,
fretting over failure, wearying over results, and weakening under
opposition. Let us ever turn our face toward the future with confidence
and trust, with the calmness of a life in harmony with itself, true to
its ideals, and slowly and constantly progressing toward their
realization.

Let us see that cowardly word Hurry in all its most degenerating
phases, let us see that it ever kills truth, loyalty, thoroughness; and
let us determine that, day by day, we will seek more and more to
substitute for it the calmness and repose of a true life, nobly lived.

I know being on time is hard. Just remember that plan is the opposite of rush. Maybe you can improve in that area. Also, being on time for anything is never worth ruining a relationship over or chasing the spirit out of your home for.

I would hesitate to denounce all hurry as a negative. Elder Ballard’s talk “Are We Keeping Pace?” came to mind, where he cites an instructive dream Wilford Woodruff had of Joseph Smith. President Kimball’s call for us to lengthen our stride was given with the intent that we move the gospel forward faster.

Yet, the question of when hurry is good comes down to a balancing act. King Benjamin warned against running faster than we have strength, and it’s worth remembering that “lengthen your stride” doesn’t mean the same thing as “walk faster.” I would submit that hurry has its appropriate uses, when done with wisdom and order.

Great point! I think that mission and purpose of life definately require activity. It definately applies to what way you are using hurry doesn’t it? I took the above quotes from Inspired Classics for Latter DAy Saints, so I was thinking in the frame of mind when a person allows the stress of hurry to get them out of sorts, frustrated, and angry. Of course this can’t be good for our process and our relationships.